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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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The Mandalorian Chapter 13 rewatch thoughts; the reduced salt edition

or at least I’m trying to be more constructive with the salt in this one let’s goooo

- god I miss the armourer so much. look at how fucking cool she looks, this is the mando design I hunger for so deeply, WHY would you give me boob plates back instead haha

- I will say with the way it’s presented this place feels way too small to be called a city lol (and I think that limited scale hurts how much I’m willing to accept the magistrate as a credible opponent to go toe to toe with ahsoka freaking tano. maybe if we’d seen directly the extent of the magistrate’s power and influence and not just the burned out wasteland that power leaves behind I’d be more on board with it. canonically she’s clearly been extremely rich and influential on a galactic scale, while the aesthetic filoni takes from samurai movies in this has a lot more to do with local warlords and smaller stakes. this is not the only time the adherence to that aesthetic without adapting it for the emotional story at hand or giving it a spin for novelty hurts the episode #hot take. it’s empty homage without quite understanding why the moments you’re emulating work so well in the context of the story they serve.)

this might be because how it’s filmed makes it seem like there’s just one big main street towards the magistrate’s palace, it’s implied to be quite a bit bigger from the establishing shot as the crest comes flying in?

- LOVE the implication that din lets baby play with the silver ball pretty freely while they’re on the ship but sets the (completely sensible tbh) boundary that he can’t bring it with him somewhere outside where he might lose it for good. that seems like reasonable dad-ing, din, well done.

anyway my heart is hurting because that silver ball is like a comfort item for the kid and it’s pretty clear from the very start that he has some kind of understanding of what might happen on this planet and so does NOT want to go out there, but also... that thing is narratively introduced as the baby’s way of saying ‘dad, don’t forget me, don’t go’. it’s what made din go back for him the first time, and that’s a connotation it still has both in the audience’s mind and for the characters. and I need to go cry in a corner for a while be right back

- not for nothing but in this scene of the baby being faced with din and a jedi standing side by side as if to present a choice, din literally has the sun right behind his head like some kind of fucking halo

gee I wonder what the baby’s choice is going to be fsadfjkhasdkjfhs. (he! loves! his dad! so much!!!!!!!)

- I wish they’d done more with the bored punch clock villain, hey-I’m-just-here-for-the-paycheck-man vibe of the guard captain guy and maybe given his nonchalance a bit of a darkly comedic tint, I think it would’ve made a better moment when he’s facing off with din towards the end if he had more... character. make him a bit more of a dark mirror of the soulless gun for hire people have seen din as in the past (and as the magistrate seems to now), do something interesting here. maybe even make it more of a mexican standoff with him holding a gun on an innocent or something so there’s something here for din to lose, it still does the western thing and lets you have that ramping tension you need for when you cut between the sword duel and this. hell, have him actually give up and walk away to show that he doesn’t fucking care about any of this, he did evil for money without any driving passion or conviction behind it, and let din decide if he’ll let him walk away scot free or not after what he’s been part of, that’s a neat subversion of the trope as well! as it stands it’s just so... empty

- baby says ‘mada! mada!’ again when they try to approach the vendor who appears to be serving foodstuffs! so maybe a word he has for food or maybe something like ‘lady person!’? (he says it when frog lady is gone on the ice planet and also as she’s walking into the razor crest for the first time. he did seem more interested in the eggs at that point, sooo lol)

din reacts to him speaking too, he glances down at him <3<3<3

- the baby seems to sense ‘ooof this is scary, time to hide’ on his own before they go into the magistrate’s place, din doesn’t appear to signal anything to him

- there’s a lot of deliberate silence in this episode, but the sound design that gets space away from the music somehow isn’t as immersive to me as it usually is on this show? I have no idea why, though

- ‘a jedi plagues me’ is somehow so fucking funny to me. the tl;dr for a lot of star wars villains through the ages

it also still cracks me up that din is immediately like ‘ma’am you can’t afford me’ fsdhfaskf

- I’m so happy din talks to and reassures the baby when he puts him down in these situations now, I remember being SO SAD when he didn’t back in chapter 7. he’s learning all the time!

- I think we should all be very happy this fight is cut off almost as soon as it begins, because I’m pretty sure ahsoka could kick din’s ass real bad and that would be terrible because I love him (listen din definitely has his moments, but up against a force user for the first time and said force user being one of the most powerful and battle-experienced jedi alive? probably not huh, if he survives that it’s on pure fatherly love and desperation and nothing else)

- this seems to be the baby asking ahsoka to carry him back to be with din (mando certainly seems to be what they’re ‘talking’ about right before) and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen

din’s fingers are also doing the nervous curl-uncurl thing as she puts the baby down, and it remains the sweetest goddamn character tic, he’s adorable

in the long pause after he tells her “he needs your help” he’s sitting SO TENSELY, it’s only when she at least promises to test the kid that he relaxes a bit

baby (well, grogu, but he’s also baby) recognizes yoda’s name and seems to almost ask ahsoka ‘yoda is here???’, and her blink in response is like ‘no, I’m sorry’

- I still deeply dislike how it’s actually done in the episode, it’s so clunky and it annoys me on a craft level, but I do like the overarching thematic narrative of both mando and the baby being on this journey towards specificity and remembering themselves, of reclaiming the particular nuances of an identity that make up a self after a series of traumas have stripped it away from them. at the start of the show neither of them has a name (and din doesn’t even have a face) and they’re basically presented as broad archetypes, The Mandalorian and The Child. and now we’re slowly unearthing things that make them this specific child, grogu, this specific mandalorian, din djarin. it’s rediscovering parts of yourself you might have thought lost as you heal from trauma and I do like that very much, it’s touching and the emotional throughline this show should never lose sight of

- oooooh no baby glances over at din when she asks him to push the stone back ;______________; it’s so awful because you can just tell... he understands that if he does this thing din might leave, but also people have clearly tricked him into using the Force before and given him this traumatized kneejerk association that if he uses it where people can see him Bad things might happen

oh okay so I think din just subtly misunderstands the baby’s appeal to him here, he thinks that look towards him means ‘dad help I don’t understand what’s being asked of me’. I guess he doesn’t have any way of knowing how complicated the baby’s past is with this yet, it’s a good try

- I’ve seen people take ‘he understands’ as baby understanding everything that’s said to him all the time, which is patently not true haha. he understands quite a lot, in the way toddlers actually understand quite a lot of what’s going on around them, even a bit of words spoken to them before they’re especially verbal themselves, but he clearly mixes up his colours still sooo

I also suspect he’s played this game before -- surely that must be one of the most obvious activities the jedi would do with the smallest children, playing Force catch basically? but he still doesn’t trust it, or her. (on the other hand he does trust that din would never hurt or trick him. help me I’m drowning in my own tears)

- personally and from anything else in this show I don’t think din would be this impatient with the baby after hearing, less than half a minute before, that he’s terrified

but hey I’m not the man in the cowboy hat what do I know (yes I’m bitter characterization matters okay lol)

- it’s both funny and so sweet that the same music plays during this father and son playing catch scene as when baby lifted that mudhorn fkdfha

- for my money din reacts exactly perfectly to grogu finally Force pulling the ball -- he’s excited and happy, signalling that this thing doesn’t have to be scary and dangerous and that when shared with the right people it can be a good joyous thing, he moves over to the baby so they can share in this victory and attune, and crucially he doesn’t demand more afterwards, which the baby must have gotten before from some of the assholes who’ve been experimenting on him. it’s just the celebration and satisfaction of having done the thing without demands or threats or any ulterior motives. HIM!!! DAD!!!!

tattoo this straight onto my heart... the way baby cheerfully offers it back to din... sdkjafhksdfhsakdjf

- din breaths out roughly and unevenly through his nose almost like it’s been punched out of him and starts fiddling with the silver ball (which is still his primary tell for anxiety/stress!) when ahsoka says “he’s formed a strong attachment to you” :) listen if I have to know that all of you fuckers are going down with me

- see the thing is... if you don’t know who ahsoka is in pretty deep detail, you might take her at face value here instead of understanding that she’s actually projecting her own feelings and traumas onto this. if you absolutely have to use this character for this part of the show you have to set her up better specifically so someone who’s never seen a single episode of clone wars can grasp the basics of where she is emotionally and what her motives are, so that her role in this story makes sense. as it is it’s sort of a compromise between pleasing old fans (who can do quite a bit of inferring to figure it out) and approaching audiences who don’t know anything, and it falls flat

(for the purposes of this show I aggressively do not care where thrawn is, and so I’m just annoyed when we find out what this was actually all for haha)

- still feel reluctant to discuss too much about ahsoka because of the whole... situation with dawson, but I do like that she lets one of the guards leave after disarming him because he’s cowering and giving up, and that she still has her padawan braid wound into her belt. also I think the effects on her and her outfit are completely fine, my problems with her this episode are all writing craft and real life stuff

- when you get first the jet pack sound, then din coming down kicking that dude in the face, then the mando flute kicking in as he lands properly... the only time the action in this episode made me go ‘fuck YEEEAAAAH’ it’s awesome

- again, just like with the idea of having a samurai/ronin movie standoff and a western standoff at the same time: having the scene be mostly silent except for the almost musical sounds of the light sabers hitting the beskar spear is such a cool concept, and it does not work in action. I don’t know enough about filmmaking to tell you why it doesn’t, but it doesn’t.

there’s also something about... the ahsoka vs. morgan scene apes the deliberately staged, ritualized, exaggerated almost like how you’d perform it in live theatre aspect of the duels in the genre, but in an empty way? why are they acting like this, what’s their relationship to each other, what’s their individual code of honour that makes them let the other person slowly theatrically disrobe before going for them? just plucking the aesthetics out of a tradition and plopping them down in your own thing without thinking about the whys or original context of it leaves it without meaning

(also let morgan express something of her own character other than I Am Evil rather than having ahsoka drop the entire exposition on her. maybe you could have her snarl some illuminating lines while they’re fighting so you get the feeling of the bitterness and brokenness that has fuelled her and burned the woods of this whole planet. in some ways she’s not that unlike din and ahsoka, she lost everything in the clone wars too and was motivated very differently by it than they were, play that up so the situation’s relevant to our protagonists! I’m sorry for all this nitpicking but I HAVE to figure out how this could have been done better for my own sake haha)

- ooooooh the way din says “I can’t accept” when offered the spear is in fact almost an exact echo of when the armourer offers him the signet in chapter 3! I thought it sounded familiar, it’s delivered in such a similar way. huh. din has some Feelings about earning things and when he hasn’t earned something, doesn’t he

- din also cares A LOT about not breaking his word, to the point of being willing to stoop to some quite dishonest methods to avoid giving his word in the first place, and I find it utterly delightful

- baby closing his eyes again after din wakes him like he’s thinking ‘maybe if I don’t wake up dad won’t go’ or even ‘at least this way I won’t know it happened until later, when it’s over’... pure emotional torture :) thank god din’s entire soul is clearly howling in protest and he took the slightest chance ahsoka gave him to not actually go through with it

- so this is the second time we get someone telling din he’s like grogu’s father. well, the armourer gives it more like a command/almost a religious obligation, ‘until it is of age or reunited with its kind you are as its father’, ahsoka is stating what’s obvious at this point but says ‘you are like a father to him’... maybe they’re doing a rule of threes thing and the last time it’s ‘you are his father’ and it sticks?

- anyway din cradling the baby so close to his chest with both arms all the time instead of the more practical way he carries him around in the crook of his arm sometimes... my suffering is deep and endless

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta

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elbiotipo · 4 years

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Ok that was the sequels with the Disney Canon, But MY idea of the sequels would be actually an animated series about Luke’s Jedi Order, it would be basically a Jedi School series with fun adventures and both old and new characters. I know I previously ranted about how I hate both school settings and teenage protagonists but this is different because it’s Jedi School and it’s Star Wars.

So, for this I take what I like from the old canon, other things from the new canon, and drop other things, don’t expect much coherence.

Anyways it’s set about 15 or so years after the Battle of Endor. Things have gotten much better, you know how it goes, the New Republic has grown and the Imperial Remnant are just a fringe junta of all the weirdo warlords of the EU, Han and Leia get married, Lando is chancellor, and Luke marries Mara Jade, because she’s awesome, and rebuilds the Jedi Order.

Since the old method of “kidnapping children” is out for obvious reasons, the Jedi Order functions more like a boarding school or summer camp in Yavin IV. It is much smaller than the prequels order, composed of:

Old masters and survivors to Order 66, like Luke, Mara, Ahsoka, Ezra and a couple others, they try their best but they are ultimately quirky teachers

First generation jedi that were only recently trained like Finn and Rey and still have much to learn

And a whole bunch of Padawans from all ages, species, worlds and backgrounds

The series mostly follows Luke’s son Ben, who is a Very Good Kid with a little of a complex fromhaving such a successful father (and mother) who are praised all over the Galaxy. He’s quiet, shy and isn’t very good with a lightsaber but has a deep connection to the force. He’s friends/rivals with his older cousin Aldera Organa (Han took Leia’s name) who is LOUD, sarcastic, hotheaded, and while overall a good girl WILL cut you up with a lightsaber if given the chance. They’re friends with a pilot jedi padawan from an Andes/Inca inspired world (we haven’t seen that before in Star Wars), a huge Wookiee who plays football (as in the one with foot, not the yanqui version), and a Trandoshan mechanic girl (because they are always shown as villain characters, make them heroes for once). Together, They Fight Crime and we see how they slowly grow from just kids to heroes.

Luke Skywalker meanwhile, tries to be a good teacher. He wakes up every day, drinks his blue milk, and reads pedagogy textbooks to try to become a better teacher, but is very concerned that he’s just winging it all, after all he only got two weeks top of training with Obi-Wan and Yoda included. Everybody assures him it’s okay but he doesn’t believe them. Leia represents the Jedi back at Coruscant, Han trains the New Republic special forces (including New Republic Super Agents Poe Dameron and Rose Tico), Lando is the New Republic Chancellor, R2D2 and C3PO are the official Jedi academy groundskeeper and translator, respectively, and Chewie is just vibing and enjoying his retirement.

Ok, so everything is nice so far. Another year in the Academy starts, all the character meet, Luke and Mara have a parent-teachers reunion, etc. etc. he assures everyone the school is Perfectly Safe, just look at that Togruta lady she has TWO lightsabers isn’t she awesome?

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Galaxy, Han and his Superagents are in a shooting with some aliens who come from outside the Galaxy. They escape in their ship and are headed to the Jedi Academy, Han tries to warn them but the transmission is cut.

So first lessons in the Jedi Academy, Ben is dissapointed that he isn’t as good as a Jedi as the other kids despite being the son of Luke and you know normal school dramas but with lightsabers.

THEN the aliens land. They are like... Vong But Not Really, intergalactic invaders who are able to manipulate and even disconect someone from the Force temporarily, and they are physically very strong. They are a scout team sent ahead of the main fleet to test the strongest force users of the Galaxy and they aren’t very impressed.

They kidnap the children to study them but they escape using Home Alone traps unorthodox tactics. A battle ensues, awesome things happen, Mara blows up their ship so they hide in the jungle at night. The kids are lost in the jungle though, and the Vong close up on them one by one. Just as the leader grabs Ben and does his villain speech, a green lightsaber lights up in the darkness. It's Luke. He gives the Vong leader one chance to free them. The Vong nervously refuse.

Luke Skywalker goes fucking feral on them, Darth-Vader-In-Rogue-One Style, until they finally surrender and free the kids, and then he goes back into Quirky Master mode and asks them all if they are okay. They are, just now are fucking terrified for several reasons.

Nobody is seriously hurt and all the kidnappers are captured so they see little reason to suspend the academic year. They send the Vong prisoners to Coruscant, where Leia resolves to learn more about these invaders before the come, and so the main arc of the series starts, while they fight pirates, bounty hunter, imperial warlords, dark side spirits and all that weird EU stuff, they slowly investigate who the Vong are, what they want and try to prepare for the upcoming invasion.

Other *fun* things that happen include:

Thrawn, who was conspicously absent all this time (though Ezra escaped from him at some point), comes back from the Unknown Regions with his fleet and sees the bunch of jokers leading what remains of the “Empire”. He goes all art student mode and says “hhmmrmm... an empeire need sthe figuer of an empoerer”...

And eventually manuevers over the warlords and crowns himself emperor, and the New Republic has another headache to deal with.

The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda from hit live-action series “The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda Show” appear, he finally found the Jedi after aimlessly wandering the Galaxy, and tearfully entrusts Baby Yoda to them. It’s a babysitting episode where Baby Yoda makes pure CHAOS in the Jedi Academy and eventually the Jedi give him back to Din, telling him to raise him until he’s more mature, much to his delight

Luke organizes a friendly lightsaber tournament to test everybody’s abilities. Ahsoka, Ezra and the rest, who had more lightsaber training than “Obi-Wan teaching me to avoid a floating ball and Yoda making me pile up rocks” wipe the floor with him.

In the villain romance nobody asked for, Thrawn marries admiral Daala in a marriage for convenience and the Jedi are invited to the wedding omg!!! Of course, IT’S A TRAP and the new Imperial couple tell them to serve the rightful galactic goverment, that is, them. And so they crash the wedding instead, it would be hilarious

The kids are majorly concerned about Luke talking to force ghosts and Mara ocassionally repeating orders from a dead Palpatine, and they try to make them get a fucking vacation and therapy for once.

LIFE. DAY. SPECIAL.

Some dark side cultists cloned Palpatine but because he was raised differently in another world he’s just like, an accountant, who gets kidnapped for their dark rituals, and the Jedi have to spend a whole fleet to rescue Some Guy who doesn’t even understand what’s going on.

Of course eventually the Vong invade in full force and the Galaxy is under attack again, the Thrawn Empire has to decide if to follow an old dream of a Sith madman or help the New Republic, and everybody has Choices to make and Tragedy incoming but that’s way in the future to write.

It would be so much fun to have an Jedi Academy series because I’m sure Mark Hamill would LOVE to be casted, the old EU has so much cool things (and stupid crap) to write about, and you have so many characters to make plots and subplots for and make toys and spinoffsHEY DISNEY ARE YOU LISTENING YOU CAN MAKE MONEY WITH THIS YOU BASTARDS

#sw #star wars #cosas mias #long post

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